Dr. Phil show tracks down wrong Lanza

Casey McNerthney

Published 9:28 pm, Friday, December 21, 2012

NEWTOWN -- As the nation's attention turned to Newtown in the aftermath of the horrific school shooting, Tom Lanza and his wife -- who raised three daughters in town -- were in Ohio and unaware of the carnage.

"Oh my God," Lanza's wife said as she learned the news on her iPhone. "You won't believe it."

What also surprised them was how many reporters confused their family with the unrelated young man who was responsible.

As major news outlets around the world scrambled for interviews, phones of Tom Lanza's family started running repeatedly.

"Our daughters got them because they Googled and Facebooked people who lived in Newtown with the last name Lanza," Tom Lanza said this week. "We were getting calls from media, from Dr. Phil."

There were many early reporting mistakes.

Shooter Adam Lanza was initially identified as his out-of-state brother, Ryan. Their mother was said to be a teacher, then not. Reporters couldn't immediately tell exactly who was dead where or what the family connections were.

Tom Lanza's children moved to Newtown in 1980 and were involved in Girl Scouts, but they didn't attend Sandy Hook Elementary School, and his grown daughters no longer live in Connecticut and hadn't resided in Newtown for years.

So how did family members become pestered with phone calls?

The public section of his daughter Jennifer's Facebook lists her hometown as Newtown, Conn. A basic Facebook search for "Newtown" and "Lanza" lists her information.

Reporters used that information to find her phone number and email address, along with Facebook pages for friends with the same last name. From those names, researchers ran background checks -- something typically done on large stories -- to find addresses and other phone numbers to call.

That's how Dr. Phil McGraw's staff ended up reaching out to the wrong Lanzas.

"This whole thing has been very upsetting to them," Tom Lanza said Thursday outside the Newtown General Store. That day he and his wife had seen the green-and-white memorial ribbons in a nearby town and decided to drive to Newtown to get some.

"Our daughters would love to have them when they come home," he said.

Lanza said the tragedy also gave his family a different perspective for Christmas.

"It's not so much the presents and stuff, especially this year," Lanza said. "It's more that we're together. You have to enjoy being together whenever they can."